Carlotta Festival presents 3 of Yale School of Drama’s best and brightest

By E. Kyle Minor

Published 6:51 am, Saturday, May 2, 2015

Photo: Joan Marcus

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Emily Zemba,
“Deer and the Lovers”

Emily Zemba,
“Deer and the Lovers”

Photo: Joan Marcus

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Ryan Campbell,
“Preston Montfort”

Ryan Campbell,
“Preston Montfort”

Photo: Joan Marcus

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Phillip Howze,
“The Children”

Phillip Howze,
“The Children”

Photo: Joan Marcus

Carlotta Festival presents 3 of Yale School of Drama’s best and brightest

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NEW HAVEN >> Just as sure as May flowers follow April showers, this month also bears the Carlotta Festival of New Plays, effectively launching three playwrights unto the world from the safe womb of Yale School of Drama.

This year’s annual festival, the 10th, runs Friday through May 15, where industry professionals and the general public can peek into the theater of tomorrow as two plays and a musical from graduating playwrights perform in repertory at the Iseman Theater.

“It’s an opportunity to invite lots of people from the industry,” said Emily Zemba, whose comedy “Deer and the Lovers” kicks off Carlotta at 8 p.m. Friday. “Hopefully to form artistic relationships,” Jeanie O’Hare, chair of playwriting, expects “25-30 industry people,” including literary managers, artistic associates and other playwrights from regional and New York theater.

The fest’s capacity for networking actually extends beyond our shores. “I’d known about The Carlotta Festival back home,” said O’Hare, who arrived in New Haven three years ago from England to head Yale’s graduate playwriting program. “It’s very well respected.”

“It’s a very nice conversation that goes around the festival,” said O’Hare, adding that playwriting students generally sign with agents during spring of their third and final year in the program.

The Carlotta Festival, named for Eugene O’Neill’s widow, Carlotta Monterey, who chose Yale University Press as the publisher of her late husband’s masterpiece “Long Day’s Journey into Night” and donated his papers to Yale, genuinely gives the graduating playwrights a head start on the hundreds of other aspiring dramatists from dozens of other graduate playwriting programs countrywide.

One chief reason that the festival is the country’s pre-eminent graduate school showcase is because it features three fully realized productions, directed, designed and dramaturged by graduating students. Networking aside, this production is a helleva send-off, as Ryan Campbell said.

“The best benefit really is putting the play in the hands of this group of people: the actors, director, the dramaturg, the designers,” said Campbell, whose modern tragedy “Preston Montfort – An American Tragedy” premieres Saturday at 8 p.m. “There’s only so much you can learn from staged readings,” he said.

“The Carlotta process has allowed me to rewrite, which is very important,” he said. “Listening to questions from the director, the actors and the designers has been invaluable.”

According to O’Hare, the “Carlotta process” starts nine months before opening night. O’Hare and the playwrights discuss which of their plays best fits into the festival.

“I believe I shouldn’t put any restriction on what they can do,” O’Hare said. “It’s very important to their growth during their three years here that they be allowed to respond to whatever is really firing them up.”

Zemba went with “Deer and the Lovers,” which follows Qiana and Peter on a romantic weekend in New Hampshire when a gruesome sight in the wild forces them to examine their own natural instincts.

Campbell decided to go with “Preston Montfort—An American Tragedy,” inspired by Euripides’ “Heracles,” in which the titular hero returns to Texas from foreign battlefields to find his home vastly effected due to the war abroad.

Phillip Howze ran with his musical “The Children,” which debuts May 10 at 8 p.m. In “The Children,” a teenage boy finds the family he seeks in a restless young tribe living by their wits on the streets of New York.

“I’ve worked a year and a half on this project,” said Howze, who wrote the book, lyrics and music for his show. “I didn’t even think about writing a musical, but the characters emerged singing.”

Where most gestation periods for new musicals can last 8 or more years, Howze is delighted to have his show produced professionally in jig time with talented people that he knows and trusts.

Zemba agreed that collaborating as real-world professionals has enriched her grad school experience immeasurably.

“I’ve learned the most about my work from hearing designers talk about it visually,” she said. “We’ve done that in the (Yale Summer) Cabaret, but with a much smaller budget and much more rough and tumble.”

For these three playwrights, The Carlotta Festival exemplifies everything they’ll take with them when they leave Yale with their master of fine arts degrees.

“First is the network of people I’ve met here,” said Campbell. “It’s invaluable. It’s something that’s really hard to find.”

“There are people I have found here that I know I’m going to continue to make work with,” Zemba said.

“The thing that resonates the most with me right now,” said Howze, “is this idea of ambition. James Bundy (dean of Yale School of Drama) talked to us last year about failure, and how artists, just like scientists, need to be willing to fail. In talking about that, he was talking about ambition and experimentation and innovation. What are you risking, what is on the line every time you pick up the pen?”

IF YOU GO

The Carlotta Festival productions are performed in rotating repertory so that all three plays can be seen in only two daysat the Iseman Theater, 1156 Chapel St., New Haven. Tickets are $20, $15 for students, and can be purchased at drama.yale.edu, 203-432-1234, or at the Yale Rep box office, 1120 Chapel St. The schedule is as follows: